On manual cars, Why can’t a car start in a higher gear?

Question

As the title says, I know that different shifts mean different gear sizes bein used, but I don’t understand why it makes you unable to start moving the car. I have been able to start a couple of cars on the 2nd shift as an experiment and I understand that I could damage the car and I do it just once for testing purposes but I don’t understand why I cannot do so on other shifts. To clarify, I mean start as in start moving the car and not just turning the car on. Thanks

In: Engineering

Answer 1

You can, acceleration just suffers. Top Gear did this with a Corvette; started it in 5th gear and went from a stop. It can be done, but most engines do not have enough low end torque to do it.